U.S. Firms Reveal How Much They Pay Workers

Workers can compare their co-workers’ pay with their own and that of the CEO—yet comparisons between companies can be tricky.

American workers, for the first time, are discovering how much employees earn at the biggest U.S. companies and how that pay compares with the chief executive’s.

At Humana Inc., the median employee made $57,385 while the CEO made 344 times that much, or $19.8 million, according to the health insurer’s proxy statement. Whirlpool Corp. says its median worker is a full-time staffer in Brazil earning $19,906 a year, while the CEO made an annualized $7.08 million, or 356 times as much. At medical-device maker Intuitive Surgical Inc., where the median employee was paid just over $157,000, the CEO got 32 times that, or $5.1 million.

Those three are among more than 50 major companies to reveal the gap between their median worker’s pay and the CEO’s annual compensation. For the first time, this year U.S. publicly traded firms are required to divulge their median employee pay in addition to CEO pay, and the ratio between the two.

The employee-pay disclosure was mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the financial crisis, with the aim of helping shareholders better understand and challenge executive-compensation practices at major U.S. companies.

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